Last week, my Firefox browser performed an update to version 57.0 “Quantum,” 64-bit, Danish translation.

Unfortunately, this “Quantum” edition (announced as “fast”) operates very slowly on my computer ― and I can see from a number of complaints in the Danish Mozilla Forum (operated by two very helpful and knowledgeable gentlemen) that I am not the only devoted Firefox fan in this country having difficulty with version 57.0.

The program itself appears to load quite quickly ― but it connects to websites slowly, and keeps “freezing” time and again ― between intervals lasting about 3 or 5 seconds, and with each “freeze” lasting between 5 and 10 seconds.

If I try to access the Google search engine, for instance, it takes about 5 seconds before all the usual details of the Google “default” homepage appear.

And then, while I am trying to enter a search word in the blank space, a box asking for my main password to Firefox suddenly appears ― so that several letters of the word I wanted to spell into Google appears I the blank space intended for my main password instead. MOST annoying!

If I try to scroll down the homepage of a, e.g., newspaper (for insatnce a Danish equivalent of the NY Times), I can only “move” an area of about the same size as the part of the homepage visible on my computer screen, before the scroll freezes ― and I must wait at least 5 seconds before I can continue the scroll.

If I try to terminate Firefox, I also have to wait about 5 seconds, before the program actually starts the closing procedure.

I have tried two different things to solve this problem ― but both of them to no avail, however:

(1) One was to start Firefox in (what I believe is called in English a) “failsafe” mode (i.e., pressing “Shift” while making a mouse click on the Firefox icon). Quntum then opens in “failsafe” mode as it should ― but this does not make it operate any faster.

(2) The other was to try to de-activate options such as “Apply hardware-acceleration where possible” in “Settings.” (I am re-translating these names from the Danish ― so kindly forgive me if I am using the wrong English labels for such functions.)

I should add that I am running the Firefox Quantum app on a Dell desktop with a Windows 10 OS (including all latest updates), connected to the internet by a 78/20 Mbit connection ― and that all my other applications (such as Thunderbird, and MS Outlook, and Adobe Acrobat, and MS Edge, &c) are all working smoothly and efficiently, without any delays or “freezes” (or, at least, with no delays above my “JND” (Just Noticeable Difference) threshold).

I would be grateful if your team of developers were able to fix these problems before issuing a version 57.1 ― and will keep an eye on this.

But until then, I am afraid I will have to temporarily switch to Microsoft’s “Edge” browser.